The Song of the Stolen Ring
by Starglass
Summary: What if the world of LotR was not just a story... but our real history? What if someone reached back into time and stole the One Ring? The barrier between the Past and the Present is breaking down, and the one way to stop it all is by using the Ring?
1. Prologue

Note â€" I don't own Middle-Earth or the characters from Middle-Earth, mainly cos I didn't write them and Tolkien did. What a clever man. This was written for fun and I most likely won't make a single penny from it. No point suing me, I only have a lampshade and a tatty dictionary. o.O  
  
  
  
  
  
PROLOGUE  
  
  
  
"The Ring is back. He warped time from two sides â€" Now and Then â€" and he plucked it from the Ringbearer's hand, and now he wears it as Sauron once did. He uses its power now, and new Rings have been forged to work under the Ring's power once more."  
  
"What must we do?"  
  
"We need to find one who can help us. Someone who still has the old blood in their veins, someone with sense and skill and wisdom. Someone who still has an element of power."  
  
"You ask for much from modern Men. They are weak and inferior to how they were in our time. You see how they make their lives easier with all that technology and rubbish? Not one of them could survive a week with the Rohirrim!"  
  
"Nevertheless, we must search, and we will find. The more we find, the better. We cannot do this alone, and I fear our old allies are here no longer to come to our aid."  
  
"Then we must find these ancestors of Middle-Earth. How long do we have?"  
  
"I managed to set a veil around the areas of time that he warped, but they will not last very long. A week, two weeks at most. When the veils break, the world will be as if the Ring was never destroyed in the first place."  
  
"Then we must hurry." 


	2. Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1  
  
  
  
London, 3rd July, 10.13am  
  
Emily Adams leant against the side of the escalator and opened her book, catching the bookmark before it slid out from between the pages. She settled to read about King Arthur in Legend and History, waiting to reach the top level of the tube station.  
  
It was the middle of summer, and the London Underground was stifling and hot. Every person was clad in summer clothes, from shorts to strap-tops to clothes that barely made it out of the 'Swimwear' category. People fanned themselves with folded newspapers and electric fans that whirred like large, obnoxious flies. Sweat glistened on everyone's brow, and tempers were very gradually fraying in the heat. Tension was building, both under ground and over ground, but it was not just the heat.  
  
Emily, however, was largely unaffected by the temperature. Dressed in frayed denim shorts and a dark blue t-shirt, she looked unremarkable. There was nothing tremendously special about her face; her nose and mouth were well formed and pleasant to look at, and her hair was a wild mass of dark gold curls that she had coaxed back into a long messy braid. What made her face interesting, however, were her eyes. Her eyes were dark and atmospheric; when she glanced at someone they truly felt the gravity of her glance. Her striking eyes saved her from being just another plain, unimportant girl who you or I would pass in the street and think nothing of. Her features held the promise of beauty, but nothing earth shattering. In her eyes you could see intelligence, emotion and something else, something that ran deeper, something that betrayed her true spirit.  
  
As she was reading about a reference to King Arthur in some French text from the twelfth century, Emily became aware that she was being watched. The skin on the back of her neck prickled and she felt distinctly awkward. She ploughed her attention into the book, determined to ignore her sudden feeling of paranoia. The feeling lingered, prodding at the back of her mind with a curious insistency that made her feel even more uncomfortable, and she resisted the urge to turn around and check if anyone really was looking at her.  
  
Curiosity won out, and very slowly, she turned to see who it was watching her, if anyone.  
  
Down the escalator, standing amidst the long snake of people waiting to reach the upper level, was a small rat-like man, his dark hair greasy and lank, his skin oily and sallow in the Underground station's lights. His shaded brown eyes were focused on her, and as he saw her furtive glance towards him, his thin-lipped mouth stretched into a slow, lizard-like smile that did not touch his eyes.  
  
Emily's head snapped around back to her book. It was nothing, just an icky man on an escalator. Nothing worrisome. It happened all the time in London, and other cities – the sick little men with the sick ideas and the sick look in their eyes that invariably revealed some rotting of their brains. It was severely unnerving, but it was common. Every city must have its creeps, she thought, and strove to think nothing more of it.  
  
She still felt dreadfully uneasy, though. Deep in her heart she felt troubled; no matter how she tried to focus on her book about King Arthur, her mind was dreadfully aware of the slimy little man's presence. It weighed on her consciousness like a black burden she could not throw off.  
  
Reaching the top level of the Underground station, she slid her ticket through the machine and darted through the gates out into the ticket hall. She ran to the nearest exit and leapt up the stairs, two steps at a time, and emerged into the bright summer sun that dazzled her almost blind for a few seconds before she moved on towards the Square.  
  
Leicester Square was almost deserted at that time of the morning, with only a few early tourists and Londoners who worked nearby milling around the park in the centre of the Square, pigeons swooping overhead and traffic rushing past nearby. It wasn't quiet, and it wasn't empty, but it was far from its usual busy state.  
  
Shrugging off her unease, Emily headed for the park, her book tucked against her chest. She would have to sit and wait for her friends; she was a quarter of an hour early, and her friends were always late. At least she could read some more about her great passion, King Arthur. Ever since she was a child she had possessed a great interest in the stories and legends that surrounded the mythological monarch, reading every book or magazine she could get her hands on so she could know every scrap of information about her idol. Of course she was aware that it was more than likely the magic and myths were all made up, and it saddened her. She never stopped wishing for the magic to be real – she wished with all her heart. But reality was reality, and daydreams hold no sway when it comes to facts and physics. It was her secret wish to prove King Arthur did actually exist, but her doubt was beginning to grow. Rational thought was beginning to take over her brain, so instead of her daydreams of dragons and wizardry, disbelief filled her mind. She was on the verge of doubting that King Arthur was anything more than a simple Celtic chieftain, and Merlin just an old bard. Their roles, she was nearly convinced, had been inflated by fiction and history into truly mythic proportions.  
  
The eyes that followed her went unseen, and the shadow that followed her path went ignored by all but a few disinterested pigeons.  
  
  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*@*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
  
  
Paris, 3rd July, 11.16am  
  
Colette rolled over and grasped feebly at the telephone, groaning miserably as the piercing ring shattered her sleep. She grasped hold of the receiver and raised it to her ear, blinking dazedly as she sat up, leaning back on her elbows as she struggled to rouse her mind from sleep. Beside her, her husband stirred and muttered something. He was awake, and turned onto his side to watch her with one half-open dark grey eye. She felt his fingers gently stroking her underarm, and it was distracting as hell.  
  
"What the hell do you want at this time of the morning?" she demanded furiously in her native French.  
  
"Pardon, but it is urgent. We need you and Jacques here immediately," the caller replied quietly, his French marred by an English accent that seemed slightly too proper.  
  
"Can't it wait?"  
  
"Non. It's very urgent. You are booked on the twelve-thirty flight to Heathrow from Charles de Gaulle. I suggest you hurry, Madame. The fate of many people rests on this."  
  
"What is it that is so urgent, Monsieur? Are you English being attacked by Martians? Or have your shrubberies started attacking you?"  
  
Beside her, Jacques chuckled.  
  
"Nothing quite so trivial, I am afraid. What we have feared has happened, and we have need of your intelligence and knowledge. They have come back."  
  
"They?" Colette put her hand to her forehead, suddenly very worried indeed. "This had better not be a prank, Monsieur! Not if you mean what I believe you mean!"  
  
"My dear," the caller said smoothly, "I would not joke about this. They have come back, and the darkness and corruption is beginning to spread once more. Do you understand?"  
  
"I…" Colette felt her throat dry up. "You cannot mean…"  
  
"They have the Ring, Colette. The Ring!"  
  
"We… We're on our way. We will be on the flight."  
  
"Bon. Au revoir. Be careful, my friend," the caller ended in English. His voice sounded sodden with tobacco smoke and beer, dark brown and velvet- like. It was a grandfather's voice.  
  
"You also," she replied in quiet English, and hung up.  
  
"Qu' est-ce qui se passe?" her husband asked, his eyes very alert and focused on her troubled face. "What is happening?"  
  
"Cheri," she murmured softly, reaching over to him and smoothing a lock of blonde hair away from his eyes, "we are all in a lot of trouble. Get dressed. We leave for London."  
  
Jacques raised an eyebrow, studying his wife for a moment, before catching her hand and pressing a kiss to the palm of her hand, grinning all the while. Then he was out of bed in a flash, walking over to the chest of drawers stark naked. He didn't seem to mind packing his bags in the nude, and to be honest, neither did she.  
  
  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*@*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
  
  
New York, 3rd July, 5.16am  
  
"Zachariah! ZACHARAIAH! Open up! OPEN UP YOU SON OF A BITCH! NOW! ZACHARIAH!"  
  
The hammering and shouting at his door didn't wake him up so much as the shock from his collision with the floor. Zach tumbled out of bed, caught in his sheets, and hit the floor with a loud, shuddering thump. He lay on the floor for a moment, dazed, before he realised that it wasn't blood roaring around in his head, but the landlord.  
  
"ZACHARIAH!" the landlord bellowed.  
  
Zach leapt up and unlocked his door, wrenching it open and glaring at Tony Grimley with all the fury he could master, considering the fact that he was clad only in his black boxers.  
  
Tony Grimley, a sixty-year-old with an alcohol problem he seemed happy having, was dressed in an old holey dressing gown the colour of chicken shit. He had a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, his jaw was grey from a thick growth of stubble and his dyed-brown hair was mussed up like a haystack. The usual stench of alcohol, beer and body odour clung to him like some sort of ethereal leech.  
  
"This came for you, ya jackass," Tony said, thrusting a letter at Zach with a grimace that would have cowed a bulldog. "Some jackass ordered me to bring it to you, like some sort of servant. I ain't no servant! Tell yer skanky friends I ain't no servant! I ain't no postman! You tell 'em, Zachariah!"  
  
"Sure thing. Sorry, Mr. Grimley. I'll tell them." He made to shut the door, but then Tony's foot wedged in the way and his ugly face appeared around, peering at Zach like a vulture would peer at food that wasn't quite dead yet.  
  
"You owe me this month's rent, kid."  
  
"Ahh… yeah. You'll get it. I swear."  
  
"I'd better. And tell those jackass friends of yours not to call 'round here anymore! I don't put up with freaks and loonies, hear me? No freaks, no loonies, and I ain't no postman!"  
  
"Sure, Mr. Grimley, I'll bear that in mind…"  
  
Zach shut the door before Tony could berate him any further, turning the locks and flipping the latches before he was satisfied that he heard Tony's dulled footsteps trudging away from his door.  
  
He ripped open the letter.  
  
A ticket to London. Concorde. A ticket for a ride on something called the London Eye that evening. A map of London. A single white card;  
  
It's started. They have it. Meet at the London Eye at the time on the ticket. Tell no one.  
  
Zach groaned and dropped back onto his bed, flopping backwards and staring up at the ceiling. He never thought that it would happen. Not really. It wasn't something that happened in real life anyway; magic things didn't really exist and so couldn't really be stolen, and the world couldn't really be at risk. It wasn't rational. How could magic exist in a world of nuclear power, space travel and brain surgery?  
  
He raised the card to his eyes, read it again, and pulled a face. This was one very rude wake-up call, and he was too awake to go back to bed. He checked the time on the ticket; 9am was when the plane left. He had time.  
  
Zach rolled off the bed, almost collided with his table, banged into the door and lumbered off to go pack his things. 


End file.
